Client Happiness, with RE/MAX's Amy Jones

Why You Should Care

Happy clients = happy agents

4-minute read

It’s no secret that RE/MAX agents are among the highest producing agents in the country. What’s one key to their success? Providing excellent client service.

Amy Jones of the Chandler, Arizona based Amy Jones Group – the #24 RE/MAX team in the nation – created a team philosophy and work ethic centered in helping and caring for clients as they would their best friends. Driven by the belief that that their job is to truly counsel and advise, Amy and her team guide their clients to make their own, well-informed decisions (a strategy we strongly believe in here at Updater!).

Read on as we sit down with Amy to discuss the growing importance of client satisfaction, and how Updater has helped her team provide a better experience to their buyers and sellers.

How did you hear about Updater?

We’re always looking for new and innovative products that can improve the client experience and set us apart from our peers. In the past, we always provided our clients with the necessary contact information for changing over their utilities, but we felt that there was always more we could do to make that process smoother. We found Updater online and decided to try it out with a few of our return clients.

So… What did they think?

The response was overwhelming, and Updater instantly became a part of our portfolio of programs and services. In 2014, we did more than $52 Million in business – that means more than 170 clients and their families had the opportunity to use Updater!

That’s great! So how do you make sure that your clients know about/use Updater?

We introduce Updater during our listing presentation as a feature of listing with our team. We let them know that we’re here to support them throughout their transaction (and beyond), and that Updater is just ONE of the tools that we use to fulfill that promise. Our buyer’s agents create a personalized invitation for our clients after they’ve gone under contract and let their clients know the benefits of Updater again at the closing table.

Since offering Updater for the first time, how have your clients responded?

The feedback from our clients has been extremely positive and enthusiastic! The hassle of preparing for a move is not only time consuming but can add unnecessary stress during what can be a very emotional transaction for clients. Our goal is to ensure that we are doing everything we can to minimize their stress. Updater is easy to explain, user friendly for all age groups, and an efficient means of helping our clients with their home purchase or sale.

Has offering Updater affected your client happiness/success/loyalty?

Absolutely! Nowadays, the marketplace is filled with different apps, gadgets, and widgets designed to improve customer experience, speed up response times, and express innovation and design, but there are FEW programs as RELEVANT and APPLICABLE to our client’s pain points as Updater. By reducing the time and and frustration spent on all of their moving tasks during the latter half of the transaction, we are ultimately improving the lasting customer experience and ensuring that we’ll meet our clients back at the closing table... with a smile.

What does client experience mean to you? Why is it important?

In our business, we find that the client experience can be broken down into two paths – the path we lay out for our clients and the journey our clients take down that path. The client experience encompasses all of the education, tools, and resources we provide to our clients as well as their perception of our readiness, relevancy, and reliability. The client experience is the ultimate measure of success, and therefore, it’s imperative that we continue to leverage innovative programs (like Updater) to exceed our client’s expectations.

How does Updater help improve client experience?

Moving is hard, and that part of the struggle is keeping track of when to turn their utilities off in their current home, when to turn them on in their new home, who to call to make sure mail isn’t lost in the meantime and how to keep friends and family in the communication loop during the transition. After using Updater, our clients have expressed their surprise at how easy these tasks were to accomplish and that, in just minutes (as opposed to the hours they had spent in previous moves), they were able to leave their computer screen with a sense of confidence that their move was being handled for them.

Why does Updater make sense for real estate agents? Any specific application for RE/MAX agents in particular?

As real estate agents in an ever changing market, it’s imperative that we continue to inventory our tool box and swap out irrelevant tools with those that address the current needs of our clientele. While there are a myriad of IDX options and places for our clients to search for homes online, there are few, if any, products that address some of the specific pain points that our customers have DURING their move. As agents, I think we often focus on the pain points related to the transaction itself and in general do an excellent job of addressing those, but it’s the personal pain points of a transaction that we leave up to our clients to address. As RE/MAX agents, we have a responsibility to our clients and to our brand to exceed the expectations of our clients and ensure a customer experience that extends beyond the negotiating table.

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About the Author

But you can call me "Manders." As Updater's Marketing Manager, I'm responsible for spreading the good news, assisting in the execution of all marketing programs, events, public relations, partnerships and more. However, I also moonlight as a sports-loving, soccer-playing, pizza-eating champion.